Book Marks: Bitter truth about sugar

17 January 2017 - 09:56 By Andrew Donaldson
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Andrew Donaldson
Andrew Donaldson

Here's the female Jack Reacher in a thrilling new debut. Sam Wylde, a Close Protection Officer, looks after the rich and powerful, like the Sharifs, Pakistani textile tycoons with a few dark secrets of their own. Equal parts domestic angst, pulp action and very unladylike behaviour.

THE WEEK'S BINGE READ

Safe From Harm by CJ Bailey (Simon & Schuster)

Here's the female Jack Reacher in a thrilling new debut. Sam Wylde, a Close Protection Officer, looks after the rich and powerful, like the Sharifs, Pakistani textile tycoons with a few dark secrets of their own. Equal parts domestic angst, pulp action and very unladylike behaviour.

THE ISSUE

How bad is Big Sugar? Very bad, according to the nutrition journalist Gary Taubes, even worse than Big Tobacco. In his hard-hitting, scrupulously researched and important new book, The Case Against Sugar (Portobello), he argues that sugar is the cause - the only culprit, in fact - of the epidemic of diabetes and obesity and other non-communicable diseases that are sweeping the planet. Taubes doesn't deny that modern lifestyles are unhealthy; our lives are sedentary and we eat crap. But to focus on factors like these merely downplays sugar's role in ruining our health.

Since 1960 there has been an 800% increase in diabetes around the world. This has coincided with the surge in the sugar content in our food. In 1975, 51.2kg of sugar, including high-fructose corn syrup, was sold to every man, woman and child in the US. By 1999, it was 68kg. Correlation, of course, is not cause, but Taubes does present evidence suggesting sugar is a toxin that messes with insulin responses and causes fat to accumulate in the liver.

Even working with it is problematic. Taubes cites the work of Dr George Campbell, a physician who ran a diabetes clinic at Durban's King Edward VIII Hospital and who focused his research on the Indian community, the descendants of indentured labourers who worked the sugar plantations. Four out of five of Campbell's patients were Indian. Many of them were still employed in the local sugar industry.

Taubes is most hard-hitting when he traces the history of Big Sugar's inroads into our diet. Its progress has been assisted by relentless propaganda, outrageous lies and bad science. And it will continue to fight for its exoneration. As the damning evidence mounts, the industry will obfuscate rather than enlighten - and argue that "moderation" is key to a "well-balanced" diet. For Taubes, however, there is no compromise. We should listen to him.

CRASH COURSE

Omar Saif Ghobash, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to Russia, was six when his father, then the UAE's first foreign minister, was assassinated. Forty years later, that killing still haunts his family - and informs his thoughtful collection, Letters to a Young Muslim (Picador). Why, Ghobash wonders, is it the Islamic warrior who is the role model for today's Muslims - and not the architects, philosophers, poets, scientists, and other intellectuals?

THE BOTTOM LINE

"Childhood over here consists of freedom, plenty of play and little academic stress." - The Happiest Kids in the World: Bringing Up Children the Dutch Way by Michele Hutchison and Rina Mae Acosta (Doubleday)

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